Getting Educated
by Pixie Altaira
Summary: When Garcia hunts for the status of Reid's current degree, she finds out more than she thought she would.


Disclaimer: The characters of criminal minds are not mine, the belong to CBs and various others. I just drag them out to play.

Penelope Garcia was bored, and a little bit irate. Some would say it was a bad combo. The agents were still milling around in the bullpen, except Reid, who was sitting at his desk typing away, the little brat. Yes, she was very mad at Junior G-man. He commented off hand he was working on another degree and then wouldn't say anything! She wasn't even aware he'd finished the last one, and wasn't that something he should have mentioned? How was the team, his family, supposed to celebrate these things if he didn't tell them! Not to mention, how were they supposed to know how to shut up the idiots they sometimes worked with properly if they couldn't explain to said idiots what type of stellar person they were being able to be near when near Reid without the whole list? And how was she supposed to know the best little treats to leave around for Reid if she didn't know what he was currently working on?

Well, if Reid wasn't going to tell her, then she'd find out on her own. After all….she asked and she'd given him a chance. Turning back to her computers she started her hunt for Reid's educational endeavors on her own personal laptop…just in case the powers that be didn't approve.

A couple hours later she was sitting staring a bit dumbfounded at the screen in front of her, and she'd been that way for well over an hour. How had they not known this? Her sweet genius was even more an accredited genius that any of them had ever thought. She always thought there was something fishy about some of what she'd found written about him before. She'd gone to Caltech, she knew students were encouraged to go other places to work on further degrees, not hatch all their eggs from the same nest, so to speak. It made sense that his Bachelor's degrees were from somewhere else, and it made even more sense that he'd started out at UNLV, where his mom had taught. Why he never told anyone he'd received his first Master's degree, one they didn't even know about, at 14, Penelope couldn't understand. She was thinking about what she ought to do next when the matter was taken out of her hands so to speak.

"Garcia? Can you get me a hard copy the records you found on the O'Riley case?" Reid asked as he walked into her office without knocking. "What are you doing?"

Reid looked puzzled at the computer screens showing his very young face smiling back at him.

"I wanted to see what you were studying now and when you finished your Philosophy degree. We should have celebrated. Why didn't you tell anyone about all this?"

Reid gave her a small glare, not even one of his angry kitty glares and then shrugged and sighed. "Gideon decided before I ever even started the academy which degrees to stress, so that is part of it. He stuck with his list when I joined the BAU. List the Caltech degrees and the MIT degree in the hard sciences, giving proof of how smart I am and then include the Psych and Sociology degree and let them know I have that human element to be doing profiling." Reid explained.

"But Reid, a Master's in English lit and at age 14? And why have you not mentioned any of the minors?" Garcia was a bit surprised at the pain the crossed Reid face when she mentioned it.

Spencer Reid sighed and tried to figure out how to explain. "You have to understand, that Master's degree…it wasn't really mine. I mean, it was mine, I achieved it, but I didn't do it for me. We had to make it until the year I was 14, you see, to get her full package of retirement benefits… mom had to teach until that year I was 14. We managed, too. If the President of the university and all mom's bosses and all the different Deans hadn't been willing to work with me so well, we wouldn't have. Heck, if it had been even three years earlier, we wouldn't have. The change in the amount of internet and technology made such a difference. We did many of my mom's classes via video presentations. One of her students, Clarence, whose uncle suffered with the same thing, set up a place at home where she could give her lectures and we could record them, and then if she wasn't well enough we'd give the class as a video presentation sometimes. She shouldn't have taught those last two years really, we couldn't get her meds right and she'd become so good at tricking me into thinking she'd taken them and she'd never been completely with it since my dad had left. But President had been working with my mom and been such close friends for so long that he agreed that as long as all her classes were covered between those grad students in her direct care and me that they would count it as teaching, because if we managed that we were truly doing better than about half the English department that year. And they didn't count the year when my dad left against her time."

"You taught classes at 14?" Garcia asked.

Reid laughed. "I started teaching classes the first summer session after I graduated from high school, which by the way was two weeks after I received my first bachelor's degree in collage, the English Lit with a minor in History with an emphasis on British History. I went for that Master's degree for the sole purpose of being able to join Simon and Josie as one of my mom's grad students, and thus cover her classes for her. I dragged getting my Master's degree out for two years. And it wasn't like we were covering all her classes most of the time. She'd be good for two or three weeks and then we'd have two weeks of bad times, and not even everyday was bad during those times. I went and got my bachelor's degrees in mathematics, chemistry and engineering during the time as well and didn't have a big problem doing it. With those I minored in Latin, geology and biology. I just had to be able to cover for her when I needed to. As soon as my mom retired, I took the last few classes I needed to finish the degrees I wanted then, presented my papers and received the three bachelors' and the master's degree at the same time. I was brought to Caltech to work on projects which would cover master's through doctorate's degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics and Engineering. I turned 15 there, and it was close enough I could come home during weekends at least twice a month. My did get my master's degree in engineering is also from Caltech, I finished the project for my masters in engineering but I had to leave at the end of the winter semester the year I turned 17 and couldn't do the project I had set for my doctorate. Things had stopped going well enough in Las Vegas for me to be away anymore so I went back to UNLV for a year and took my first 'soft' classes since that Master's degree…that is the criminal justice degree. It is the only associate's degree I ever got, but my mom was so bad during that time that was all I could handle. When I turned 18 and could have my mom taken care of properly, I got her into Bennington and that winter I went to MIT to get my doctorate in Engineering. It's in mechanical engineering, but I also added a BS in chemical engineering with a minor in civil engineering. I needed to be farther away after I had my mom committed. I met Gideon who encouraged me to think about profiling and the FBI. I finished there when I was 19, in May. I then went to Georgetown and did the BA's in Psychology and Sociology, minors in world history and oddly enough theater. And that should cover things until the FBI academy."

Garcia sat a bit stunned, but thinking a bit she also thought she might understand. Reid still liked to bury himself in books when he was stressed and during bad times. When he was upset, he read. When he was sad, he read. Not only did he read, he read things which made him think and learn…things that made is brain think hard about something other than the issues at hand. She'd noticed that he hadn't actually talked about taking care of his mother other than in a vaguest sense. It must have been the same then…buried deep in his education to not have to focus more than necessary on the day to day hardships. "Oh, Spencer."

"Don't Garcia. There were good times in it all; even during the hard times there was some good."

Garcia set her hand on Reid's arm and lightly patted him. Then she gave a little shove. "Still, you never told us you'd finished the Philosophy degree!"

Spencer shrugged. "Honestly, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Some of the reading was great, don't get me wrong, fascinating even, but I just didn't like it as well I have other topics. Finishing seemed more a relief at the end than something to celebrate. Right now I going triple degrees again, mostly because my main focus is harder to do like I want. I'm going anthropology, archeology and linguistics, but I want to do class time in them all because these are truly fascinating. This is fun."

"I noticed you forgot to mention your minor right now, Junior G-man." Garcia prompted. Reid blushed and sighed.

"Nah, it just hasn't turned out to be nearly the help I thought it would be. I figured Women's Studies would help me understand female behavior a bit better and it's done nothing! It explains nothing and those classes tend to be downright scary to go to. I'm finishing it through online courses."

Garcia laughed and Reid smiled. "I didn't think you were really interested, when you asked earlier." Reid said softly after the laughing had died down. "I mean, why would you be?"

"Silly boy, of course I was interested. I want to know what you are doing, and how you are doing. Heck, I even like knowing why you are doing whatever you are doing and how well you are enjoying things. I care for you, Spencer Reid. You are my baby boy genius and my Junior G-man and sometimes even my sweet cakes and little cupcake…although I try to save those nicknames for when I know the police officers on the other end of the phone listening to you all have been harassing my babies or not playing nice…anyway, you are important to me."

"And you don't think I'm a bigger freak?" Spencer asked.

Garcia smiled. "Never. It just makes me all the more amazed at my sweet boy. One thing, I never did find out what age you actually started collage…"

Spencer blushed. "The summer I was nine. To make a long sad tale short…my dad in a loud drunken state told a cop that lived in our neighborhood, at a large neighborhood family picnic that my dad insisted we attend mind you, that he didn't care about regulations, he wasn't paying no childcare costs for his nine year old son, who was well able to take care of himself and anyone else he needed to. The cop said that he would to be finding childcare for me or he would be taken away for child endangerment and that he would be watching us closely all summer long…in a rather blurred speech himself because he was nearly as drunk as my dad. Needless to say when my mom ended up teaching all three summer sessions, she made a deal with the president of the university and the dean of students. I would take Collage Algebra and English 101 and World Lit, the second two taught by my mom, and if I passed with above a 95%, with the dean of students doing all grading so he was sure I wasn't cheating, I could take classes that my mother got permission from the instructors for me to be in for the rest of the summer, 9 to 12 credits each session…which is over what even normal university students can take, but I needed to be in classrooms being "watched" all day. Needless to say I was finished with most my core classes that I could take by the end of the summer and had a higher score in all of them than any of the other students. All before I started High School."

Garcia giggled. Reid's smirk was self-satisfied. "I do like that method of childcare, I must say. Did you ever ask what the other students thought?"

Reid laughed. "In classes not taught by my mom, we'd drag a desk off to a corner or side and I'd sit there and I mostly took my notes in colored pencils. I know most students just assumed I was just a professor's kid who was sitting in a class to be kept from roaming the streets. The classes my mom taught in actually had a large teacher's desk and in her class I sat on top of it. Sometimes I'd even participate. I took my mathematics from Dean Johansen's wife Clara, and she encouraged me to participate. She liked watching me outshine all the cocky just graduated seniors. Their twins had been seniors that year and I guess had been very snotty ones. "

Garcia laughed. "My youngest brother was one of those very snotty seniors. I can see why she'd have liked that. So, should I be calling you baby boy genius more often then? "

Reid rolled his eyes. "How about you get me what I need for the O'Riley report?"

The hard copy was printed out and Reid had stepped through the door when Garcia heard a soft "And I actually like Junior G-man best, but I don't terribly mind sweet cheeks."


End file.
